


One Golden Glance of What Should Be

by bulfinch



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aziraphale Loves Crowley (Good Omens), But soft! What fluff through yonder fic breaks?, Crowley Loves Aziraphale (Good Omens), Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Lovely lovely snaky eyes, Poetical praise of ancient glass production
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-06
Updated: 2021-02-06
Packaged: 2021-03-17 23:40:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29233908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bulfinch/pseuds/bulfinch
Summary: No more plain gazes. No more open looks. Now Aziraphale would have to learn to read the arch of his brows, the set of his shoulders, the tightness lingering near his temples, the quirk of his rarely-smiling mouth...Aziraphale longed after those eyes. Hungered for them and missed them like he missed wearing his wings out in the open air. He grieved over their hiddenness.Or, Once he's free to do so, Aziraphale makes it his mission to catch glimpses of Crowley's lovely eyes.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 30





	One Golden Glance of What Should Be

Truths are so often at the edges of things, where attention tends not to linger. Aziraphale had become an expert at edges, at the kinds of things that desired not to be gazed on too directly, that asked one to look askance, that lurked in the peripheries of perception. Truths that shied away from being named, as if embarrassed by their own splendour. It was Crowley that was the subject of his eons of study. Crowley’s edges that concerned him, fascinated him, called to his rapt gaze despite their best efforts. 

The demon had been wrapped in nothing but an odd, startling kind of innocence in the Beginning. All banter and prodding questions on the Garden wall. Open as the sky stretching over them. Aziraphale had marvelled at the shocking loveliness of this Fallen thing. This being whose humour had cut through the fog of his worry, had made him look up from his fretting long enough to draw a clear breath. And then Crawly had offered his own fears up in exchange. 

Soon, the sky closed in. And the rain came. 

Crawly had shuffled into the angel’s side, pulling himself close, shivering with fear or cold at the jagged and searing-sharp birth pangs of lightning, the booming cries of the first echoing thunderclap. And grinning uncertainly, nervously, warmly at Aziraphale from under his dripping wing. 

Aziraphale had simply looked back at him, entranced by wide eyes, gold as sunlight through honeycomb, pure and unguarded. In that moment the angel felt the racing of his own not-yet-ancient heart, the blissful ache spreading through his limbs, and realized, caught somewhere between panic and resignation, that he was already lost, lost, lost. 

The demon’s impossible guilelessness was there still, as time went by, as the stuff of the world proliferated and filled in its blank spaces. As oceans swelled and mountains rose. It lay in his disbelief, his incredulity at cruelty. His surprise, even after everything, at the harshness of God’s Plan and the budding, ruthless causticity of mankind. 

It had been there at the Arc, all exclamation and surprise. And there still, shyly though, shining a little less bright at Golgotha. Less shock. More wistful dismay, features cast in half-shadow by black cloth, shielding him against the insistent desert sun.

It had withered and weakened somewhere after that, as best as Aziraphale could tell. Retreated and hid and, a short while later, flickered out. 

Glass had once been an opaque substance. Bright colours twined in molten form around cores to create dazzling trinkets of blues and yellows. Little vessels in the shape of fish, cheery beads, inlays to set in gold and to glaze palace walls in glory. But the centuries passed and the humans tweaked and stretched and learned to create the miraculous from silica and fire and breath. Flutes as thin as water from Meroe, gilded and enamelled. Elegant urns in clear, pale blue from Rome. 

When next Aziraphale met Crawly… _Crowley_ , he had shaded his eyes with an odd contraption of glass. Crowley’s own idea, Aziraphale had been sure.

He cloaked himself, too, in a sharper kind of wit. Shrugs and scoffs and sideways glances. Fine clothes begged to be stared at and envied over, to distract from the honesty that lay in coal-slitted jasper. And, if one’s glance did stray upward, made any attempt to linger on those unblinking eyes, there was the glass, night-dark, to guard them.

No more plain gazes. No more open looks. Now Aziraphale would have to learn to read the arch of his brows, the set of his shoulders, the tightness lingering near his temples, the quirk of his rarely-smiling mouth. 

But in there, somewhere between the lines, starling and sun-bright, was always that loveliness that emanated from the core of Crowley. 

Aziraphale longed after those eyes. Hungered for them and missed them like he missed wearing his wings out in the open air. He grieved over their hiddenness and, when they were revealed in private moments, stolen through the centuries, it was like a tonic that eased the doubt and fear and weariness out the the angel, if only for a few precious moments. Before Aziraphale remembered himself and retreated behind his own defences. 

But now, the world was new again, in its own bewildered way. And Aziraphale had let his walls, besieged by love for so many years, fall and crumble and concede to the happiness that was this unexpected variation on their old gavotte. 

And a new dance emerged. A new kind of joyful fencing match. 

Aziraphale was dogged in his pursuit, steady in the onslaught of his adoring, brash offence. Pulling dark glass off the bridge of a sharp, elegant nose at every opportunity. Backing Crowley into corners, letting hands roam, swallowing the yelp of an enraptured kind of surprise, chasing sweet incredulity with his tongue. All enjoyable diversion while Aziraphale stripped Crowley of his armour (and, often, more). He had never made much of a warrior, but Aziraphale was, he discovered, quite the brilliant tactician. 

The parapet that Crowley had built around the dearness of his heart had never really stood a chance. Love was scaling fortress towers, leaping over barricades, charging through his best defences. 

And soon enough, the demon began conceding of his own accord, surrendering willingly. Casting aside his vanguard when he walked through the door—on table tops and sofa arms and kitchen counters—as easily as one might hang up a coat, kick off one’s shoes at the end of a long day. And it was like the sun breaking through the clouds, filling their home with the beauty of Crowley, easy and open and in the fullness of himself. And Aziraphale could burst with rapture, glutting his starving eyes at last on honey. Overjoyed and eager and lost, lost, lost. 

Sometimes, winding aimlessly through the thrum of the city, sitting under drifting clouds and watching ducks glide over rippled green glass, Crowley would turn to Aziraphale, lean in. The line of his mouth would break wide into a grin, lips twisting beautifully into the shape of scandalous syllables. And then, he would tip those glasses down to meet the wide eyes of his angel, and a shiver would thrill up Aziraphale’s spine as if sharing a secret, whispered between the two of them and the autumn wind.

Too soon, always, an elegant finger would be pushing the metal arch between the panes back up. But in his parting glance, Crowley would promise _more, later, tonight, forever._

And in the darkened bower of their bed, no fine clothes, no armour, no pride, no shame, Crowley would look plainly, softly at Aziraphale. “Beautiful,” the demon would murmur, eyes pained and tender and elated. As if he were lost, lost lost. 

And Aziraphale, heart so full that he was sure his love must exist beyond his skin, would delight in making Crowley shiver, as if before storm clouds. Not afraid or cold. But overcome by the sublime of everything they could be together. 

**Author's Note:**

> Playing it a little fast and loose here. I’m fairly certain that the Sedeinga flutes are later than the Roman snippet in the show. But if it makes you feel better, remember that us humans have gotten the whole timeline wrong, made a lot of mess about fossils and Palaeolithic flints (also a joke by the Almighty) and are probably therefore wrong about the dates for ancient Meroitic glass, too.
> 
> Also, I know this is yet another variation on an oft repeated theme (hell, I’ve even danced around this in my own work here and there) but I hope you still found it enjoyable nonetheless. In light of that, I thought I’d take this opportunity to rec this gem: [**Shield**](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20425532) (1104 words) by [**HopeCoppice**](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HopeCoppice)  
>  Found while this one was still percolating. It covers similar ground, but with a different, lovely twist.


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